


Birthday Parfait

by rhysiana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Fluff, Kent Parson's Birthday, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 20:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15517959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: When Kent has to duck into a bakery off a Vegas side street to avoid a photographer, he's feeling pretty pessimistic about how his birthday will turn out this year. Fortunately the baker he meets there seems determined to turn it around.





	Birthday Parfait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [staunchly_anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/staunchly_anonymous/gifts).



> I didn't have time to do the KPBB this year, but I told zombi I'd write her one of the prompts I helped her brainstorm that she didn't end up using, so here it is! A slight modification of this prompt: “You’re a store clerk and oh shit I just spotted my ex please let me hide behind your desk-thing” AU. (Originally posted to Tumblr on July 4th, I'm just late getting it up over here.)

Kent spotted the camera, and then the face behind it, in the reflection of a store window and sighed. It was the off season. Surely Kent shouldn’t have to deal with this in the off season, right? But he’d attracted a paparazzo in the wake of coming out who was apparently convinced Kent was going to make him a fortune, and no amount of completely dull daily life seemed to shake him.

Kent sped up. The man with the camera did likewise. He stopped abruptly to look at a display of vintage postcards outside a bookstore and the guy stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk to raise his stupid telephoto lens, not even attempting to be subtle anymore, and something about the way he shamelessly impeded traffic all around him finally caused Kent’s patience to snap. He waited just long enough for a large tour group to pass before he ducked behind them and around a corner, pushing through the first open business door he saw.

A bakery, Kent realized, as a wave of blessedly cool air him and he paused to catch his breath, taking in the cheerful décor, a scattering of café tables, and the sparkling pastry that stretched along the wall opposite the door.

“Be with you in just a sec!” called a cheerful voice through an open door into the back, presumably the kitchen.

Kent scanned the room, hoping for a table out of view from the street, but the large storefront windows killed that idea. He took another nervous glance over his shoulder at the sidewalk. He didn’t see his stalker yet, but he had a feeling it would be mere moments before his luck changed again.

A compact blond man came through the kitchen door, dusting his hands on his apron, and looked up with a practiced smile. “Welcome to The Peach Bushel, what can I get…” He blinked and looked at Kent in genuine concern. “Honey, are you all right?”

Kent really wondered what he looked like to elicit such a reaction, but he suspected running half a block in the middle of Vegas in July hadn’t done much to help. An idea occurred to him, though. “Um, do you think I could hide behind your counter? My… my ex is following me.”

The baker’s face lost some of its sympathy and he narrowed his eyes. “You wanna try that again?”

It was Kent’s turn to blink. Had the guy actually recognized him? That was one advantage of playing for the Aces, usually; if they weren’t in the playoffs, it wasn’t a hockey enough town for anyone to recognize him. Whatever; he’d figure it out later. “Okay, not my ex. A paparazzo. He’s been following me everywhere. _Please_.”

The baker relaxed at that and smiled again, this time less professionally. “Sure thing, sugar. You just come sit back here and I’ll send him on his way if he comes in.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Kent said, and practically dove behind the counter. He settled on the floor beside the cash register where the man pointed and slumped down enough that his head wouldn’t be visible.

“You just stay there a sec,” the baker said. “I’m just gonna go grab a few things from the back.”

Kent nodded and focused on trying to relax. At least the pastry case behind him was cool.

The man returned shortly with a pie pan in one hand and stacked set of lidded bowls in the other. He set them all briskly out on the counter behind the cash register.

“I’m Kent, by the way.” Introducing himself seemed only polite, even if he was doing it from the floor.

The baker gave half a smile and popped the lids off his bowls. “Oh, I know. I used to play hockey for a hot minute back in college. I still follow the news.” He shot a look at Kent and caught him with his eyebrows raised. He pointed at him with a spoon. “Don’t even start.” He turned back to the counter. “I’m Eric.”

“Nice to meet you. I mean, uh…”

Eric laughed at that. “Don’t worry about it. I was worried today was going to be boring.” He started scooping fruit out of the bowls and lining them into the pie pan, though Kent couldn’t see what pattern they might be forming from his position on the floor.

The bell over the door still hadn’t rung. They were still safe. Kent gave into curiosity. “What are you making?”

“Fourth of July fruit tart, for last-minute shoppers. Lemon tart on the bottom, with strawberries and blueberries in alternating rows on the top. There’ll be whipped cream, too,” Eric paused to look around his work station and huffed in annoyance, “but I left the darned pastry bag in the back.”

Kent was about to ask how many last-minute shoppers a bakery tended to get on the Fourth of July, but then the bell over the door rang. He slumped down even further.

Eric turned around, customer service smile firmly back in place. His Southern accent, which had faded out without Kent noticing, got ratcheted back up to eleven as he fell into his practiced greeting. “Welcome to the Peach Bushel, can I get you anything?”

“Did a man come in here? Jock-looking guy, blond, backwards cap?”

Eric’s smile fell away. He gestured broadly at the store. “Do you see anyone like that here?”

“You didn’t let him out through the back?”

“I did not,” Eric said, frost practically dripping off his words. “Now, are you gonna buy anything or not? Because if not, I’m going to have to ask you to leave my store.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

The bell rang again and the fight drained out of Eric’s shoulders almost immediately. He glanced down at Kent and smiled. “Well, there, that wasn’t so bad.”

Kent started to stand up, but Eric waved him back down as he went back to his fruit.

“No, no, stay there for a bit longer, just in case he comes back by. I didn’t like the look of him one bit. Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

Kent snorted. “Accurate.”

Eric spooned the last of the blueberries in place and nodded in satisfaction at the tart before darting into the back to grab his aforementioned pastry bag. He checked the tip and then started quickly and efficiently dotting the tart with small bits of whipped cream. Kent craned his neck and Eric smiled when he noticed.

“Stars,” he said, lifting the tart down off the counter for a second for Kent to see.

“Very patriotic,” Kent said admiringly, and Eric laughed.

“They do seem to be a hit. I’ve already made all the ones people ordered ahead of time, but I always make extras afterward for walk-ins.” He added the last few stars and then turned to open the pastry case and put it on display. When he stood back, his eyes flickered back over to Kent briefly, and he nodded his head slightly at the door. “So does that happen to you a lot?”

Kent let his head thunk back against the pastry case. “It didn’t _use to_. It’s just since the, you know…” Eric nodded, and Kent once again wondered why he seemed to know who he was before he continued. “Of course, I’m usually not here for the Fourth anyway, so who knows?”

“Where are you usually?”

“New York, with my mom. It’s, um,” he blushed unaccountably, “it’s my birthday. But I didn’t want to bring all the attention down on her, so I didn’t go this year.”

Eric tilted his head at Kent, considering, then nodded. “Wait here.” He disappeared into the back once more, this time emerging with two tall glasses and another bowl. He set the glasses on the counter, opened the end of the pastry bag, and started spooning large dollops of whipped cream into the glasses, followed by little cubes of cake from the new bowl, then berries, then more cream, and so on until the glasses were full. He fished two tall spoons out of a tub under the counter and presented one the glasses to Kent with flourish before taking up his own.

Kent blinked at the glass. The whole process had taken maybe five minutes. “I… what?”

“It’s a happy birthday parfait! Well, a trifle, but that doesn’t rhyme as well.”

“Thank you? Do you always have things on hand to do that at a moment’s notice?”

Eric laughed again. Kent was really growing to like that sound. “No, no, it’s just what I always take to my apartment complex’s potluck because it’s a good way to use up scraps. Put it in a glass bowl and it looks so pretty nobody realizes how easy it is.” He grinned down at Kent.

Kent couldn’t help but smile back. Then he tried the trifle and felt his eyes widen at how good it was. “Your neighbors don’t deserve you,” he said around his spoon.

“That’s probably true,” Eric agreed, “though my MooMaw would lecture me about the sin of pride to hear me say it.”

“Well, it is Sin City, after all,” Kent said, and Eric had to swallow back his laugh as a customer walked in.

Kent spent the rest of the afternoon behind Eric’s counter. He thought surely the other man would get annoyed with having to step around him constantly and kick him out, but he seemed perfectly at ease, nimbly stepping over Kent’s outstretched legs without so much as breaking his stride when fetching things from the case. When six o’clock came around, he had indeed sold out of all his fruit tarts, plus a great many patriotically decorated cupcakes as well.

“Phew,” he said dramatically as he flipped the sign on the door and threw the lock, but he was smiling as he said it. “There, we survived!”

Kent stood up awkwardly, shaking out his legs to try to get a little feeling back into where his butt had gone numb. “I should get going, I know you have things to do, but thank you again. You know, for letting me hide. You didn’t have to let me stay for so long.”

Eric looked at him in surprise. “Don’t be silly! My mama and I have been helping hide my daddy’s returning football stars from prying eyes for more years than I can count now. You were no trouble. And you’re a mite easier to hide than any of them are.” He patted Kent lightly on the arm as he came back behind the counter and started gathering bowls. “Besides, you can’t leave yet.”

“I can’t?”

“You’re going to help me put together this trifle and then come to that potluck with me. I can’t leave you alone on your birthday!”

Kent stood frozen behind the counter, completely unsure how to respond.

Eric noticed and looked uncertain for the first time. “Unless you have other plans, of course! I didn’t mean to presume…”

“No!” Kent said, too loud, too fast. “No, I don’t have plans. That would be… really nice, actually.”

Eric beamed at him. “Perfect! Now come on, let’s get to work.”

Later, looking up at the fireworks from the Strip from Eric’s apartment complex balcony with all his other neighbors and stuffed full of food from at least half a dozen cultural backgrounds, Kent thought it was one of the best birthdays he could remember. Eric leaned back against him to point at a particularly good firework, and Kent’s arm slipped around him comfortably without a thought. Eric grinned back at him, and Kent thought that maybe, just maybe, even though he hadn’t had any candles to blow out, the birthday wish he hadn’t even been aware he’d been holding out for had come true.


End file.
